Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/193

178 One can understand his popularity in a time when patriotism merely meant devotion to the Prince, in a time when the country was content to be the property of the ruler. For the Francis of the Heptameron has many popular qualities: he is brave, gallant, magnanimous, and cheerful.

But if the Heptameron instructs one in the character of Francis, far more striking is the portrait which it gives of Margaret herself in her later youth and middle age, very different from the exquisite profile which Michelet has etched for us, though this is true enough, no doubt, of the Margaret of Meaux. We must none the less accept this later likeness, for the artist painted herself. No delicate profile this: a full face, laughing, with shrewd humorous lips, and the great nose of Francis, grown coarser than in her girlish days. A face that has experienced many aspects of life and fortune, and has learned a tolerant clearsightedness for their pretensions. No mystic's face now, with faint, undecided features; yet with a certain wistful and religious spirit in the eyes and in the smile, making her still hope to find in Heaven the virtue she so good-humouredly misses from the earth.

In the eleventh novel of the Heptameron Margaret relates, under altered names, her adventure at the hunting-lodge of Bonnivet. She introduces herself: "A lady of so good a family that there could be no better; a widow, living with her brother who loved her dearly, who was himself a great lord and husband of a daughter of the King. This young Prince was greatly subject to his desires, loving the chace, pastimes, and dances, as youth requires; and he had a very tiresome wife (the poor, holy, neglected, consumptive Claude) whom his pastimes did not please at